Mom! Dad! Look at what I can do!

One summer I had a weekend overnight temp job where all I had to do is babysit a computer. No experience was required, as all they needed us to do was watch the screen to make sure all the messages on it were showing up in the proper order while it was storing information. They gave us a sheet of paper which listed all the correct messages in the order they would/should appear throughout the shift. If anything went wrong, all we needed to do was to call any one of three British engineering consultants who were staying at a nearby hotel. All went smoothly for me -- a nice, easy way to make extra money. Now, all of this information is not directly relevant to this post, but I wanted to provide readers with the setting.

On my first night there, the guy who manned the computer for the second shift, stayed late (off the clock) to make sure I was all set with the instructions before he left. It turned out he was a high school teacher who had the summer off, so he was there for the extra income too. He was one of the most interesting people I'd ever met -- excellent company. I rarely remember how any particular conversation originated or evolved, but he ended up telling me about how psychology in the animal kingdom and psychology within and among humans, are sometimes closely related. He gave an example with zebras. It went something like this:

He said that after a baby zebra is born, its mother walks back and forth in front of the newborn several times, so that her unique pattern of stripes is etched or imprinted into her baby's memory. This enables the baby to easily identify which one is his mother out of the whole herd of zebras. My coworker went on to tell me that this same phenomenon happens with human babies. He said that after a human baby is born, all the people he or she comes into close contact with, leave an imprint in his or her memory. He told me that this theory explains why there is such a strong tendency in humans to unconsciously seek out -- or be drawn to -- people who seem familiar to them.


IMPRINT TRANSFERENCE
written in February 1997

At last I've found the reason
why I stood in awe --

Your self-expression matched my philosophies.

I wished I could have frozen time...
It's not that I would want you to stay down --
Not entirely a case of affinity through similar troubles...

It's that there's something strangely warming
about a small benign crack in a windowpane
It appears to me as a shield, blocking out greed and hypocrisy
I guess that in the real world, it might let in the cold
But standing alone in my memory, it is so beautiful...
It must stay that way.

I've both envied and admired your disarming ways
That is to say, I want them for myself
But mostly, I had never thought I'd find again
another soul not infected by vanity
Then there you were -- Hmmm...

I went on to wonder whether it could be
that a man so sensible as yourself
would ever fall ignorant
And the answer, as you know, was that
it didn't matter either way, since
the "ideal deity" had been created by (and for) me.

I haven't forgotten that
in a way, you gave me that answer
from the beginning
But clearly I need the distance of time
to test beliefs for myself.

Greg, if faith really does exist
do you think it is ever a good thing?